Selling Personal Skills: the Chef’s Business Card

Whether you are a personal chef, a restaurant chef, a pastry, sous or head chef, a well designed business card helps keep the clients you have and attract the ones who haven’t heard of you yet.

Chefs must exude professionalism, experience and a fine palette. On a business card this translates to a well polished business card free of frills, informative, serious and tasteful. When it comes to designing a chef’s business card it’s all about the right pairing of personality and career focused experience.

The first decision a chef must make is whether to promote their current employer or their own expertise as a chef. Is the goal of the business card to bring people into a certain restaurant or eatery or is it to promote the skills of the individual chef? The answer to this question will act as guide to the formatting of the entire business card.

Background designs can either be plain and simple, a single color of pattern or consist of a subtle design say folded napkins, wine bottles or salt and pepper shakers. Choosing to put a particular dish into the background image may mean updating your business card as often as your menu.

Colors should invoke the restaurant’s branding and personality. If the chef is freelance, plain crisp colors work best. Creams, blues and reds are good. Black and white engraved cards also work well.

Clip art can be off putting if too gimmicky or loud. Choose images that reflect the specialty of the restaurant or chef whether it is seafood or desserts, main courses or wines. If clip art seems a little rough for the caliber of restaurant consider either a picture of the store front, the chef or no picture at all. Sometimes the best impression is made in person.

A chef’s card should include a tag line such as “graduate of the Culinary Institute” or “James Beard award winner”. Chefs are selling their individual abilities and the chef’s business card is their personal canvas.

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